I Was Lost But Your Fool
by portionss-forfoxes
Summary: The Doctor is supposed to be listening to the Chieftain's tale of trolls in the North Farthing.  He isn't.  He's looking at her.     Everything could have been different.


**Title:** I Was Lost But Your Fool  
><strong>Author:<strong> brokenheartedshipper  
><strong>Characters, Pairings:<strong> Eleven, Amy, Eleven/Amy, implied Rory  
><strong>Warning:<strong> AU (see notes)  
><strong>Rating:<strong> A heavy PG-13, bordering on a soft R  
><strong>Summary:<strong> The Doctor is supposed to be listening to the Chieftain's tale of trolls in the North Farthing. He isn't. He's looking at her. Everything could have been different.  
><strong>Word Count:<strong> 4557  
><strong>Notes:<strong> This is an AU version of "The God Complex" scene, with added angsty dialog. It also assumes Amy already knows the Doctor is married to River. On top of that it weaves in AU S5 events with the goodbye scene. Title from "Creature Fear" by Bon Iver.

* * *

><p>The sun over Sajun was pale, a muted, ethereal shade of periwinkle. All through the day it seemed shrouded in a coat of olive clouds that doused the entire dome of sky. Sajun was a planet of subdued colors and hushed tones. The towns were quiet and unassuming, the houses built from smooth beige wood, all lined along the dirt roads like colonial communes. The townsfolk were meek and rarely spoke unless spoken to, though not out of fear of an oppressive government or forced submission to an assertedly superior race, but because of something else entirely: a fondness for simplicity and a great value placed on time for thinking to oneself.<p>

The ocean's color was more or less the same, though perhaps a little less strikingly blue than Earth's, and leaning more towards gray, but almost the same, anyway, save for one significant detail: the waves washed out to sea instead of onto land. This meant that a certain redheaded human and her odd, gangly friend could stand barefoot in the bleary-toned sand of the shoreline and feel the waves shivering up around their toes, gurgling awake and garnering force before finally surging outward, pulling at their pasty, frozen feet, _Come out, come out!_ They could feel life itself kindling round their ankles, no beginning and no end, and it was nothing short of marvelous.

Amy smiled minutely as she resisted yet another wave beckoning her out to sea, and inexplicably she turned her head upward to the faded sun and mused,

"Who would've guessed _dreary_ could be so beautiful?"

The Doctor caught sight of her gazing at the sun, the faint chilly wind lazily tousling strands of her fiery hair.

He still liked bright colors better.

"Even so, it can't happen like this. After everything we've been through, Doctor. Everything. You can't just drop me off at my house and say goodbye like we've shared a cab."

"And what's the alternative? Me standing over your grave? Over your broken body? Over Rory's body?"

Amy searches his eyes, and this time she isn't sure what she's looking for, isn't sure what she wanted to find. All she knows is that it certainly isn't this.

"What's happened to us, Doctor?" she whispered, and it wasn't an idle musing, wasn't a one-dimensional sentiment. It was an honest question, one in need of an answer.

"Oh, Amy," the Doctor sighed, lifting a hand to brush her hair from her face but stopping short before he touched her. (It was a reflex more than anything, one he should've broken a long time ago, the day she put on a white dress and forgot him.) "So much has changed."

"So," Amy grinned, literally hopping to the TARDIS. "Where to next?"

"That's the thing about having a magical-spaceship-slash-time-machine," the Doctor answered, smiling as he unlocked the door of the TARDIS and leaned against it. "There really are no limits."

Amy knew that-of course she knew that-but every time he told her she looked just as excited as the first time she'd comprehended it, eyes widening and going bright, face alighting. (Thus, the Doctor liked to remind her of this fact. A lot.)

She skipped into the TARDIS, trailing behind the Doctor as he began pulling levers and commencing his usual tender stroking of the TARDIS console.

"Well?" he prodded. "You still haven't picked a place!"

Amy put a finger to her chin, thoughtful. "Well, I've been thinking—"

"—Have you?—"

"—on how you always seem to take me places where I will be absolutely _ostracized_for my clothes."

"Big word there, Pond."

"Shut up. So why don't you…" She sidled up to him, lacing her fingers together on his shoulder and nestling her head there, "…take me someplace where the people dress like me?"

"All right, shady London nightclub, here we come!"

"Har har har, very funny," laughed Amy (not laughing). "But I'm serious. There's got to be someplace where this—" She gestured to her green cotton sweater, leather miniskirt, fishnet tights and combat boots, "—is normal."

The Doctor looked her up and down once or twice, visibly debating something in his head, before whispering to himself,

"No."

Amy slumped and whined. "Oh, come on!" she pleaded. "I know it _exists_ by the look on your face, so why won't you just _tell_ me?"

"_No_," the Doctor asserted, authoritatively flipping switches. "No. Absolutely not. It's…it's—inappropriate."

Amy's face lit up. "Inappropriate? Sounds _fabulous_! Tell me more."

The Doctor ran one hand through his hair, wincing. "It's…there are these people, a branch-off of humans—they look exactly the same but with different chromosome pairs; AB instead of XY, the science behind it is quite interesting, I should tell you sometime—" Noticing the look on Amy's face, the Doctor cut himself short wisely. "They're a small people, the Havrons, and very clever. They realized that almost all Havrons between the ages of fourteen and twenty-eight would only goof off and rebel, so they sent all the youth to their planet's fifth moon to… '_party_' and what not. A Havron arrives on the night of his fourteenth birthday, and by the time he turns twenty-eight he is expected to return a mature adult, ready to 'get down to business,' if you will…get a job and that."

"That sounds…excellent! Does it work?"

"Does what work?"

"The 'everyone-coming-back-mature-adults' bit."

"Surprisingly, yes," the Doctor said appraisingly, with a tilt of his head.

"Well, that's settled then," said Amy, clapping a hand down on the console. "We're going."

"Amy, we really shouldn't," winced the Doctor.

She grinned. They went.

Amy was in heaven for the first eight hours—hit on by five of the most attractive Havron boys (and one of the most attractive Havron girls), fed shimshuck (the Havron equivalent of pizza) and wine (apparently wine was universal). The Doctor grew increasingly anxious with each new Havron who "innuendo'd" (as he so eloquently put it) at Amy, and Amy grew increasingly tickled. Everything was fine and dandy for Amy Pond—that is, until the Havron ladies noticed the Doctor. After the tenth arm-touch and twenty-first airy giggle, Amy had had enough. She was forced to drag the Doctor back to the TARDIS.

"Why so soon?" he whined.

"Wha—? Just an hour ago you were dying to leave!"

"Yes, but it's just now starting to get _fun_!" the Doctor gushed, sighing as Amy yanked the key from his pocket and shoved it into the lock aggressively. "Didn't you hear—Lanna and Haléa were loving my story about Arthur Dent and me—"

"Doctor, your_ story_ is _not_ what they were loving," Amy countered darkly, finally managing to open the TARDIS door and step inside. The warmth and glowing yellow lights felt lovely in comparison to the chilly night she'd just left. Amy recognized rather inelegantly that the feeling was home.

The Doctor was not getting it. Frowning, he stepped into the TARDIS on one foot and slowly made his way up the steps.

"What do you mean that's not what they were loving?" he wondered. "They were laughing quite hard, and they kept brushing—" His face blanched with realization. "Oh," he declared, looking positively horrified. "Oh."

"Yes," griped Amy. " 'Oh.' "

Looking up from his appalled trance, the Doctor noticed Amy's grouchy stance, her crossed arms, the typical leaning against the railing of the upper level with a scowl.

He approached her carefully, eyes imploring.

"Amy, come on," he pleaded, cautiously snaking an arm around her shoulders. Her scowl deepened, and her body grew stiff.

Searching for something comforting to say, the Doctor decided (with an internal fist pump) on, "You know you were the prettiest girl there…by far!"

He felt Amy loosen a bit under his grip.

"Really?" she questioned doubtfully.

"Yes!" he proclaimed, pouncing on this golden opportunity. "Yes, oh, _totally_! By a mile! By a _light year_! Absolutely out of every other girl's range." He was on a role here, babbling at the speed of light (well, not literally, but still…)! "Why else would all those Havron boys innuendo at you? Because you're gorgeous, that's why! I mean, if I were a Havron, I would—"

"You would what," Amy interrupted, and her voice came so clear and sharp and sudden, her head snapping to look at him, that the Doctor jumped away from her as a reflex.

She was still waiting for an answer, her face intent but otherwise absolutely unreadable.

"I would…" the Doctor stuttered, waving his hand about and between the two of them. "…you know…you…"

"You would 'you know' me?"

"That's not what I meant."

"Well, what did you mean?"

The Doctor brought his hand together to properly fidget and darted his eyes side to side as though searching for an exit.

"This is…hard."

"_What_ is it that's hard?"

"Stop that! Stop…_innuendo'ing_ at me."

"I wasn't."

"I think you were!"

"I think you'd like to think I was."

"I think…what do I think?"

Amy slid off the railing, and finally a relenting smile came to her face. She sauntered over to the Doctor, and comfortingly wrapped her arms around him. He positively sank with relief. She was his friend again.

"By the way, Doctor," she whispered in his ear, and something in her tone of voice made him nervous. "It's totally fine with me that you want to 'you know' me."

"I said if I were a Havron!" the Doctor immediately gasped.

Amy slithered away from him (_slithered_, how was she doing that, with her hands everywhere?).

"And I'm not," the Doctor stumbled. "A Havron."

"Right," Amy said, but the look on her face didn't change. "I'm sure Time Lords are _much_ more adept than Havrons anyway."

"What—stop that!" the Doctor demanded, his face going red.

Amy had already slithered (slithered again!) halfway up the stairs. "Stop what?"

"You were…implying!"

"What was I implying?"

"Oh…nothing! Just go to bed!"

"If that's what you want."

"You just did it aga—" But when he whirled around, she was already gone.

"So what do I do now?" Amy asks him, throwing her hands up and letting them fall like dead weight back down to her sides.

The Doctor's lips tighten. "You go in there. You have dinner. You watch the telly. You meet up with some friends for a drink. You argue over what color to paint the bathroom. You have children and you name them something ridiculous like Oswald and Juniper. You get a white picket fence. Rory gets nervous on their first day of school but pretends he's not…Things like that."

Amy frowns. "And what about their sister?"

"What?" says the Doctor.

"These hypothetical kids, they'll have an older sister. And what will they know about her, Doctor? And…and what will they know about their brother-in-law, hm?"

The Doctor's face falls and he turns away from her. The gray English sun is streaking through the chilly fog, and suddenly purple shadows alight under his eyes. The light reminds Amy of another day, another planet, another life whose name she can't now remember, only how is it possible that it can seem so far away and yet it can't have been longer than yesterday?

_Periwinkle_, she thinks. _That's what you'd call this color_.

"Tell me," Amy demands. "Tell me, Doctor."

And he looks at her, a thousand years older than he was the day before.

"Nothing," he tells her. "Absolutely nothing."

Amy said she was feeling nostalgic.

They were sipping tea in the TARDIS, the Doctor leaning against the console, Amy swinging her legs in her seat by the railing. He looked up, alarmed, as she announced this, but she was wholly nonchalant, showing no signs of hesitance or conflict.

"Oh," he answered, face falling. "Do you want me to take you home?"

Amy cocked her head bemusedly. "What? No."

"But you said—you miss—"

Amy laughed (a beautiful sound) and the Doctor allowed himself a small, internal sigh of relief. "Oh, no—not like that. God, I don't miss Leadworth, not at all. I just meant…" Here she shifted around, stuffing her palms under her thighs and scrunching her lips to the side in thought. "I meant the kind of nostalgia for…for a time you've never actually lived through, you know?"

"I don't."

Chuckling, she mused, "No, I suppose you wouldn't...I mean like when you look at a picture of women in the sixties with their fancy hairdos and their classy silk gloves and you just think…I wish we still had that."

The Doctor squinted, tilting his head up to the ceiling thoughtfully. "I can't say I know the feeling," he remarked, and then with sparkling eyes he pushed off the console and galloped (_galloped!_) toward Amy. "Know why?" he posed, sidling up next to her and wrapping one arm round her shoulders. "Because I can go…_anywhere_." And with that he squeezed her knee (she jumped—Amy was a ticklish one) and leapt up and back to the console, teacup forgotten and tilting off the sideboard so its contents trickled out.

"So!" the Doctor declared. "Sixties it is!" And he began flipping switches, twisting knobs, pulling levers.

Amy was smiling. She slid off her seat and made her way over to where the Doctor was bustling (always with the bustling!) about. She trailed behind him as he circled the console, occasionally nudging his shoulder or bumping his hip as he babbled on.

"Can we dress up this time?" she implored, interrupting his story about mayhem on the set of _Breakfast at Tiffany's_. "You could wear a gray pinstriped suit with cuff-links and a neckerchief. Minus the bowtie."

The Doctor goggled at her, positively taken aback. "_Plus_ the bowtie!" he asserted. "New York Fashion Week 1968. Bowties are very in vogue."

"Is that where we're going?" Amy shrieked in excitement. Seizing his elbow with a steely grip, she stared up at him with eyes wide and intense. "Fashion Week? Oh, pretty pretty _pleeeease_ with a cherry on top?"

The Doctor threw his arms up, partly because he didn't want her hand on his elbow and partly because he was afraid he did. "Why not?" he conceded. "If that will satiate your inexplicable nostalgia!"

Amy grinned and clapped her hands together, followed closely by a pop of the hip and a smirk. "You know, you won't fit in very well," she deduced, bringing one hand up to her chin as she looked him up and down. "You don't show nearly enough skin."

The Doctor sniffed, affronted. "Well, you show enough for the both of us," he retorted sorrowfully.

Amy threw her hands out and shook her head as if what she was about to say was the most obvious thing she'd ever heard. "Only to balance us out!"

Instead of responding (because he really had no response other than to dubiously survey Amy's bare, mile-long legs), the Doctor yanked down the final lever, and they went soaring.

Amy held tight to the railing as they leaned back, glancing at each other and grinning. His right and her left hand bumped as the TARDIS jerked forward, and without hesitating Amy shifted her palm to cover his firmly.

The Doctor looked over at her, surprised and distracted, but Amy only grinned wider.

"Tell me you'll wear a Speedo on the runway!" she shouted over the TARDIS' boisterous whirring, and the Doctor shook his head and looked away but didn't move his hand.

"Everything could've been different," Amy whispers, angry tears welling up in her stubborn eyes. "_Everything_."

The Doctor frowns. "I don't know what you mean."

She takes one step closer to him, her expression raw and intense in a way the Doctor hasn't yet seen in Amy Pond. It's the kind of face that could only be reserved for her to him, anger and hurt and fear and nostalgia of the worst kind turned inward and reflected onto him. Amy never could have those sorts of unstaunched emotions for anyone but the Doctor.

She seizes his hands, his wrists, with the strength and will of a weeping angel. "If I hadn't given up on you," she says, looking into his eyes so piercingly and with such desperation that the Doctor ached to pull away.

"Amy, what are you talking about, you never—"

"No, shut up," says Amy, and he almost smiles, because it's such a thoroughly _Amy_ thing to say, but he doesn't (can't). "If I hadn't given up on you," she goes on, "that day in Sajun. Everything could've been different."

"What are you—" the Doctor starts, squirming to release his hands from Amy's grasp, but he stops abruptly, mouth falling open as he gapes at her. _ Sajun_, she'd said. _Sajun_.

He's almost forgotten.

(That is a lie.)

He knows what he should say. Something like, _Amy, calm down, you're not thinking straight_, or _You and I both know you don't mean that_, or even a harsh, _You're delusional_. But he doesn't (can't).

"Is that what you wanted?" he asks, and even as he says it he can feel how wrong it is (but he can also feel the burn of Amy's fingers, curled around the pulse point on his wrists). "Is that what you really want?"

And that seems to break Amy's trance. She's shocked, and her grip on him slackens. He's not sure whether this relieves or despairs him.

"I don't know," she says.

"Well, that much is enough," the Doctor replies, and he doesn't mean to sound bitter, but he does. He slips her hands off his wrists not without severity.

"The answer should be no," Amy frowns.

"Yes," the Doctor agrees. "It should."

As they stroll back into town, the Doctor is silent, squinting at the inexplicably blinding light of the ashen sky. Amy's arms are swinging, and so are his, and maybe it's not so accidental that her hand falls shut around his.

This time he doesn't look at her in surprise. He squeezes her palm. She ducks her head and smiles.

By the time they're having dinner in the village they're both on a high. The Doctor tells stories to the children, his movements and gestures animated, his cheeks flushed from wind and latent sunshine. Amy watches him, watches the children giggling and clapping their tiny pale hands. She feels something warm stir in the pit of her stomach, and letters sweet grow potent on her tongue.

The children want to play with her hair, of course. They've never seen anything like it. She lets them, lets them climb all over her, lets them yank and pull and twist and bite with that unceasing curiosity only children can harbor, evidently even children of the alien variety.

The Doctor is supposed to be listening to the Chieftain's tale of trolls in the North Farthing. He isn't. He's looking at her.

When night falls in Sajun, the sun does not set, it only twists in the sky and turns a deep, shadowy shade of violet. It's dark like nighttime on the earth, but instead of pitch-black it's pitch-purple.

(This is a phrase the Sajuns will use for many centuries more now, an odd, sacred remnant of a legend and his fire-haired lady).

Amy reaches for the Doctor's hand as they saunter back to their hut (a sort of wooden shed the Chieftain keeps in his backyard for guests who never visit). It's becoming less and less unordinary now, and she thinks if she keeps it up a little longer, it might even turn into routine. A dreaded word, yes, but admittedly in this case it would be…fine. Good. Fantastic, even.

The gray-green leaves of the tall Sajun grass curl around the entrance to their hut, the stocks rustling against each other with a _hssh_ sound in the nipping nighttime breeze. The Doctor's side is warm against her own, and Amy lets him lead the way, her footsteps falling into rhythm with his.

Suddenly he stops, right outside their door, and Amy nearly lurches to the ground, but she catches herself just in time. He leans down away from her, not relinquishing her left hand, and she can't see his face in the lilac dark or detect what it is he's doing.

He straightens back up, releases her hand (leaving her palms colder than they have any right to be), and then he meets her bewildered eyes.

"Look," he says, and she looks. He's got something cradled in his hands—it's glowing in the darkness…

A tiny scarlet flower.

Amy's eyes go wide and her mouth falls open. The Doctor plops it gently into her hands for inspection.

"But—how?" Amy wonders. It's so small she's afraid she'll lose it to the wind. "This—it's impossible! The color, it's…extraordinary." Her eyes adjust and the flower shimmers under her gaze, redder than ever. "This doesn't belong," she says.

"Oh, but it does belong," says the Doctor, and with his smile mere inches from her face he closes her fingers around the tiny miracle.

The interior of their hut includes one empty shelf, a single straw bed, and four barren walls. Once inside, Amy wastes no time in pushing the Doctor up against one of those walls, curling her fingers around the nape of his neck and carefully, methodically bringing her lips to his. He wastes no time in stopping her.

"Amy," he says, but he isn't squirming or yelping in surprise or reproachfully screeching at her. In fact, he's almost whispering, his voice reverent and soft like the wind. "What are you doing," but it's not a question, and his breath is warm on her lips.

"Kissing you," Amy replies simply, and she tries to recommence the professed activity, but he grabs the sides of her face and stops her again.

"Amy, we can't," he sighs—_sighs_—like she's the most exasperating, tiresome being in the whole wide universe.

"I don't get it," Amy responds, and she's not sure why they're both whispering. "You let me hold your hand."

"Yes, and I shouldn't have."

"But I don't _get_ it," she repeats, and suddenly everything is clear, sharp and right in front of her; his young and calloused hands holding her face in position so close to his own that their noses are touching, his hazel eyes foggy and focused on her, the shadows of his face distorted and slanted violet with the night sun streaking through the window, their heavy breathing, their chests pressed together, the intensity of it all. And she makes it simple, she says, "I only want to be with you."

He searches her eyes, still not moving, but she can see he almost sighs again, and she hates that. "Amy, you know that's not true."

"You don't get to tell me what I want and what I don't want," Amy hisses. "That's one thing you really can't know."

And she can see he's surprised by that, surprised by how honestly and fully she meant what she'd said. Amy realizes he still can't quite believe anyone could love him.

She pounces on this breach of his conduct, bringing her hands up to cover his and leaning their foreheads together, her mouth moving on his cheek, on the corner of his lips, as she whispers urgently,

"Doctor, _Doctor_. Seeing you today with those children, I just—" And she realizes that she, Amy Pond, is flustered over a boy acting cute with some kids. "I got this feeling, you know? You must know it by now, you're nine hundred years old for Christ's sake, but—" She stops. Starts again. "_This_ is all I want." In that moment it is more truth than any words she's ever spoken.

So she kisses him again, and this time he lets her, and his hands go into her hair and tangle, and when she pushes up against him and his head slams into the wall he groans.

He's moving them now, one hand going to Amy's waist as he spins them around and in an awkward, groping dance, trying to move towards the bed without ever having to separate from Amy's tongue, warm and relentless in his mouth.

Suddenly they've fallen back onto the straw bed—Amy giggles and the Doctor would, too, if he weren't already moaning for the return of her mouth. Out of the dark Amy feels warm lips moving on hers again, and her hands travel up his back and through his hair as he moves his searching mouth from her lips to her chin and down her throat, hot and wet across her collarbone and onto the top of one breast.

He's quiet. She never thought she would like that so much.

Amy's already impatient, and she shoves the Doctor's jacket off his shoulders as he yanks the neck of her shirt down with his teeth. Then she's reaching down between their flush bodies, both heaving, gasping and panting and rolling hips up against each other with driving cries, and she's unhinging his braces, feeling him press into her thigh with insistent need, and suddenly he stops short.

He drops his head to fall by Amy's shoulder, and then neither of them is moving anymore.

"No," he says, his voice muffled by her neck and shoulder. "We can't do this."

"Yes we can," Amy grunts immediately, returning to unbuckling his braces.

"_No_," he growls, pushing her away with considerable force, and she feels like a child, like a stupid, misbehaving child. "We can't."

Tears well up in her eyes, and maybe it wouldn't be so hard to convince him, to ask him what's the matter and then remind him that _it doesn't fucking matter_, but it's this feeling that does it. Like she's just a little girl who dreamt of stars that didn't exist and had to be chastised for being so goddamn stupid. Like she's the most exasperating, tiresome being in the whole wide universe.

And so she doesn't do anything but turn her back to him and fall asleep crying the silent, frustrated tears of a child.

"There wouldn't have been a Rory," says the Doctor. "At least not for you. And no Oswald or Juniper. No everyday life, no first day of Kindergarten...no River..."

Amy smiles a little grimly. "I don't know that I care as much as I should," she answers. Then she looks at him and takes a deep breath, frowning a bit like she's taking in every detail and weighing it in her mind. She reaches up, brushes his hair out of his eyes. She probably shouldn't. She does anyway. "A little part of me will always be in love with you," she says.

"A _little _part," the Doctor assures her.

"A bigger part than I'd like," she replies. "Bigger, even, than..." But that sentence, she doesn't finish. Even Amy knows when she's gone too far.

And so he leaves. He goes. He leaves her there to her nice, simple husband and her white-picket fence and her quaint white house. But he leaves a question hanging in the air.

_Is that what you really want?_

Amy realizes with a gasp and a wave of panic, mere seconds and years too late, that the answer is yes.


End file.
